The Rising East
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin laughed Friday during a press conference in Crawford, Texas.
While Presidents George Bush of the United States and Jiang Zemin of China were amiably agreeing on Friday that the Korean peninsula should be free of nuclear arms, the North Koreans were thundering that they had every right to the weapons and might give them up only if a long list of conditions was met. With North Korea,
it’s deja vu all over againBush and Jiang talked for a couple of hours at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, then briefed the press. Bush said they had agreed "to work toward a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula and a peaceful resolution of this issue."
Jiang chimed in: "We Chinese always hold the position that the Korean peninsula should be nuclear-weapon free."
Meantime, the official (North) Korean Central News Agency, quoting an unnamed spokes-man for the Foreign Ministry, said the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea "was ready to seek a negotiated settlement" on three conditions: The United States recognizes the DPRK's sovereignty, signs a non-aggression treaty and does not hinder economic development of North Korea.
At the same time, an unofficial North Korean spokesman in Tokyo, long thought to reflect the party line in Pyongyang, laid down five conditions: The United States must sign a peace treaty with North Korea, establish diplomatic relations, withdraw its military forces from South Korea, remove North Korea from the "axis of evil" and give North Korea most-favored-nation treatment in trade.
This latest ruckus with North Korea started early this month when Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly confronted North Korean leaders in Pyongyang with evidence that they were violating a 1994 pledge not to produce nuclear weapons. The North Koreans defiantly acknowledged it.
For the next four weeks, there was much burning of midnight oil in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo -- and probably Moscow and Beijing -- trying to figure out what the Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il wanted and why he was throwing a monkey wrench into the works now. As China's Jiang told the press Friday, "We are completely in the dark on this recent development."
This week, however, much came clear and, as the baseball catcher and philosopher Yogi Berra might have said, it was deja vu all over again. The North Koreans were up to their old tricks of diplomacy by diatribe and evidently figured, as they have before, that the United States was preoccupied with the campaign against terror and Iraq and could be pressed for concessions.
The North Korean spokesman, speaking through KCNA, asserted that the United States has "massively" stockpiled nuclear weapons in South Korea for half a century. The United States says it took all nuclear weapons out of South Korea 30 years ago. The spokesman also claimed that the United States has made North Korea a target for preemptive attack.
Thus, the spokesman contended, "the DPRK was entitled to possess not only nuclear weapons but any type of weapon more powerful than that so as to defend its sovereignty and right to existence." The other weapons presumably referred to chemical and biological munitions that North Korea is known to have stockpiled.
The KCNA statement was echoed by North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Pak Gil Yon. He demanded that North Korea be removed from the "axis of evil," the phrase coined by Bush to lump North Korea with Iraq and Iran.
The more flamboyant statement came from Kim Myong Chol, a North Korean resident of Japan who has been an unofficial conduit for North Korean pronouncements for 35 years. While his rhetoric tends to be even more belligerent than that of KCNA, Kim has often signaled the opening position of North Korea going into negotiations.
Kim claimed that North Korea has "not less than 100 nuclear warheads." He further asserted that "North Korea is capable of striking any strategic target on the U.S. mainland with a tiny fleet of ICBMs," or intercontinental ballistic missiles. If that's so, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency might want to check its satellite photos of North Korea to see what it has missed.
Besides Jiang, Bush was to confer with President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan over the weekend during a gathering of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Mexico. Much scratching of heads over what to do about North Korea was expected.
Richard Halloran is a former correspondent
for The New York Times in Asia and a former editorial
director of the Star-Bulletin. His column appears Sundays.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com
